1/350 TOS 1701 for SWMBO!

[GreyGhost]

Really nice work, Mark ...

I like your wife's choice for the metallic look, it's something different ...

Love the Bridge detailing ...

-Gregg

[MarkW]

Thanks! I came across an unplanned benefit of my saucer glue masking scheme (recall I used liquid mask to keep the interior seams free of light blocking paint). Turns out the paint free lines were handy when laying out the wires to ensure I didn't create a pinch:

My collection of completed parts now include the bridge dome, the neck, and the two nacelles, with the saucer soon to follow:

[MarkW]

Did a quick light check for the secondary hull LEDS (all connections are soldered, the PL connectors were consistently inconsistent, and also made a cool addition to my son's costume.

It goes without saying his had the only light up ARC reactor in the neighborhood!

[MarkW]

Filed under "this sucks", I just wired up the complete saucer, and the port blinkie was largely dead. It blinked, but was useless as it was too dim to register. I'll swing by Radio Shack on the way from work tomorrow and pick up a spare 3V white LED. While it won't have an omni lens, I think I can work a reflector in to get the right distribution.

[ikar]

I saw one of these built at our recent regional. It was impressive to look into the top of the dome and see the bridge monitors all lit up. Unfortunately flashing lights under the nacelle dome would not work.

Another thing I noticed was that he had part of the inner nacelles light up like on the later types of star ships in the other series. Does this come with the kit or its lighting set? On the original Enterprise sides of the nacelles did not light up.

[MarkW]

I've noticed the Polar Lights lighting kit tends to drop the blinking nacelle effects unless it is driven at slightly higher than 12V. If you use the stock power adapter, it tends to be under powered.

As for the nacelle grill lights, those are more apocrypha than cannon. The Polar Lights kit does include provisions for them in terms of electrical connectors and clear parts. According to legend, the original TV Enterprise was supposed to have been lit that way, but budget cuts and time prevented it from being realized. As my wife wants them lit and they can be lit, what was on TV is now completely irrelevant. ;)

One extra down side of the nacelle lighting is it tends to just increase the electrical burden on the Polar lights kit, which as I mentioned is already struggling.

[ikar]

Any way to increase power without blowing the entire setup?

Maybe two separate power sources? Hopefully without having to buy another expensive lighting kit.

As for the lights, I never heard that story, but you must obey Star Fleet Command.

[MarkW]

To be honest, the only place I've seen the nacelle lighting bit was in the research Polar Lights did...

As for more power, it seems to before an issue of jacking up the voltage just a tad, not so much current. On to more work, and a near disaster. As the kit port saucer strobe LED was bad, I replaced it with a Radio Shack standard 5mm white LED. Since these LEDs are highly directional, I flattened the tip and scuffed the sides with. 320 grit sanding stick. This gives it a near uniform glow, lighting the strobes quite nicely.

Now the near disaster. I was about to glue the saucer shut, and thought "Aha! I forgot to run the neck wire "H" into the saucer from the neck." So thinking I had caught a major mistake, I glued the neck onto the lower saucer half. I connected "H", and set some tape to hold the neck in place. Then off to watch the tube with the wife...

Coming back 2 hours later, I found the tape, due to the angle of the neck, had pulled the front of the neck away from the saucer horribly. Fortunately, the glue wasn't quite set due to the cold in the garage, so I doused the inside of the neck/lower saucer joint with Ambro Pro-Weld and was able to loosen up the previous glue enough to adjust the angle (spilling Ambro all over the place in the process, greatly limiting my work space...). Using my hands I could force the joint closed, but as soon as I let go it opened up again. Panic time. I broke a hobby bar clamp trying to get enough pressure on the joint, so I wrapped the neck piece with a shop towel to protect the paint and got a real wood working bar clamp on it. I clamped it down until the saucer and neck were flush, which was a trick because the clamp and neck angle kept pulling the saucer off the edge of the work bench...

That did the trick, but I had to be careful, as this clamp would easily crush through even this beefy kit if I gave it too many turns. Overall there was some minor paint damage from glue spilling, but the dozens of coats of dull coat kept it mostly together, and from my earlier experience I can touch the damage up fairly easily with a brush. Now on to glueing the saucer top on, and reducing my part count from 3 to 1!

[MarkW]

BIG DAY. The saucer is now together on the pylon, and the glue is curing.

While my sanded and scuffed Radio Shack special LED was doing an OK job replacing the omni port side strobe, the light there wasn't as bright as on the starboard side. First order of business was to add reflectors of tin foil to help the situation. The foil is actually angled somewhat upward (downward in the picture) to focus as much light to the top side strobe without messing up the side or bottom strobes.

Here's where the liquid masking tape I used for the saucer top really came in handy. The final wire layout to snug things down was relatively painless to route, as the "stay out" zones were clearly marked--especially around that "W" shaped structure near the pylon. A lot of wiring goes through a tight spot there.

Here's the bottom saucer half final layout (except the three loose Bridge lights, which will be finalized later). These are as much for my future reference when I build ship #2.

Then came the obligatory anal-retentive final this is it light check. As I had glue gunned down the saucer top wires fairly tightly to avoid any possibility of pinching the slack, they were loosely plugged in. I had them so short in fact I had to apply all the glue before final connecting them. These photos are pretty accurate as to light intensity; you can see the foil reflectors on the port (red) side strobe are working quite well. I'm really pleased with how bright the tiny outside most strobes came out, as they can be hard to evenly light.

Some "into Darkness" action:

And every hobby/plastic jawed spring clamp I could find...

I was a little surprised at how "gappy" the saucer halves could get, and even with all the alignment pins and internal structure there was a lot of slop in the fit. You really have to be careful to align top and bottom gridlines all the way around.

[MarkW]

Minor update, and rubber hits the road time.

I've been cleaning up the saucer seam, which has been relatively easy using SGT. Now comes the real challenge--fixing all the damaged paint. Here's what the saucer looked like from all the sanding:

I've already got one coat on to repair the upper surface of the saucer. Next, I'll need to repair the grid lines, then it's mask and paint the saucer edge time.

[TaiidanTomcat]

This is amazing! Excellent work!

[MarkW]

Thanks!

Ah, the joys of metallic paint and surface defects...

After cleaning up the seam, I masked the saucer underside, using an engraved panel line as a demarcation to protect the decals. The porthole were masked with liquid mask, while the tape was trimmed using the ring panel line. Only had three slips of the X-Acto to fix...

Here it is after the first coat.

And on to the aforementioned joys of flaw enhancing metallic paint. Even though it was quite clear there was no seam line, there was a seam line.

It wasn't as much a seam as an uneven edge, but it still looked bad. More putty, more paint later:

Now on to that dang shuttle bay and secondary hull...

[Aigore]

Yup, metal paint reveals everything! Good save, looking awesome!

[MarkW]

Thanks!

Had a crazy weekend. First, I found out I could indeed seal up the secondary hull with the PL light kit around the hangar bay. I had made some mods to the side of the hangar bay to allow the kit lights to fit better.

Second, continuing my attempts to not use the PL clear parts unless necessary, I did some mods to the kit parts. The window for the control room above the hangar doors was cut out and squared, and my initial test of filling the window with canopy glue worked ok. I also carved out the solid fantail piece so the exterior landing lights could be seen though the plastic. This was done with a Dremel, and while I tried to preserve the upper edged, some damage occurred. This was simply fixed with SGT on the fantail, and a little chapstick for mold release on the spare hangar floor.

I took the opportunity to clean up the seam on the entrance to the hangar. The three pieces do not fit well at all, and the gaps/seams are quite visible even with the hangar door mounted.

Third, I had the Q and R lights hooked up and hot glued in place on the Hangar bay when I managed to fry both chains. I stupidly hooked them up to a 9V supply, and they went out in a brilliant flash. Nice thing about parallel circuits...all bulbs get to blow. :rolleyes:/>

Since I didn't have any T-1 sized white LEDs handy, I went with what I had...

Turns out LED strips are fairly easy to pull components off from. And I was able to file down a 5mm (T-1 3/4) to fit the hangar bay observation room. With a little soldering, and some more painful fitting, this should work.

On to more positive news, I was never super happy with the secondary hull lights. The massive structure to hold the saucer and neck in place tends to block lights to some of the windows. I added two more strips of three LEDs more directly under the neck to light the windows potentially in shadow. The two new ones can be seen below, free floating and not hot glued down.

The last bit of supplemental lighting includes two more LEDs, which will be tied into the three light 5V string. One is a tiny SMD, which I plan to use to light the Hangar back windows, maybe to illuminate a shadow cast crew member.

Finally, and getting off my lazy duff, I made a simple 3-5V tester for a 9V battery, with a 470 Ohm resistor wired in. This would have saved me a whole weekend of fixing lights I fried...

[Boomstick]

Excellent!!

[MarkW]

Thanks. Finally made some real progress--today I closed up the secondary hull. I had been trying to improve the lighting to the rear most windows by the shuttle bay, but it just wasnt working. I even replaced the SMD LED I was using on one side with a 7 cd 5mm LED to see if that would help--nada.

The 5 MM LED side:

The original SMD:

My constant test fitting of the shuttle bay to the hulls to try and improve the lighting and make sure things still fit resulted in the bay itself starting to have structural issues (I hate dealing with clear styrene). So I made one final attempt, then closed it up. I Dremeled out a channel from the lower LED to the window location in the hopes more light would get there:

Closing things up is a process in and of itself--making sure all the wires were in place, making sure parts that needed to be fitted prior to closing (#136, for example), fitting but not gluing the nacelles on so I could solder the connectors for the nacelle lights, etc.

In the end...

I also worked on the fantail piece, using Tamiya clears to fill in the outside. As I am using the Paragraphix PEPE set, I didn't need to paint the whole thing. I did use a black Sharpie around the light areas so there wouldn't be any raw plastic showing along the edges of the PE mask.

[MarkW]

One thing I found kind of cool when I got the secondary hull and nacelles together was that old familiar feel I hadn't experienced since I was about 10 or so...that weird, off balance feeling the Enterprise has in your hand. Granted back then it was the original AMT kit, but the aside from scale, it was the exact same off balance wobbly feel you get from the Enterpise.

Ok, enough nostalgia. Back to reality and one freakin' more kick in the teeth from R2 and the absolute craptastic job done molding this kit. Was this completely unavoidable!?

If you don't recognize it, it's the shoe at the bottom of the secondary hull the mounting rod goes through. The sink marks are what you see covered in gray Tamiya putty. These were some of the deepest sink marks I have ever seen, several mm deep and absolutely ridiculous on a kit of this cost and overall simplicity. And yes, the side ones are just high wide and deep enough to show even when nearly buried in the secondary hull. Guess I've been spoiled by EVERY other manufacturer that can produce large parts that aren't this badly molded.

Fortunately I'm running out of parts to be disappointed with the quality of, so things are looking up. And before I get too down on the kit, the engineering overall has been ok--parts align, the joints are sturdy, etc.

[MarkW]

Main paint going on today for the secondary hull. Had to stop and redo the seams after the first coat, as a few scratches showed up. I also had to fix the detail pieces at the front of the secondary hull. Turns out those tiny finger like projections break off real easily...and they do indeed exist on the studio model.

I haven't searched so hard trying to disprove something existed since Elvis dated Bigfoot...

This was a relatively simple fix with SGT to the rescue. The channels were re-carved using a fine toothed razor saw. This could have been a lot worse, next time I'll be more careful and keep those parts off until the last second.

Remember as the paint goes on, practice safe spraying!

[MarkW]

All major paint is on, now I'm completing major sub-assembly construction. The nacelles went on last night (idiot proof for alignment if you get them snugged down right), and I'm placing the shuttle in the bay now, with the doors an observation bubble going on later today. The shuttle was attached using clear GE Silicone caulk.

I've been using E6000 Black adhesive (http://www.michaels.com/E-6000%C2%AE/gc0181,default,pd.html) to attach certain parts, like the fantail or the impulse engines to the saucer. It is one of those rubbery glues, like Shoe Goo that isn't reactive enough in small amounts to damage styrene. But like Shoe Goo it holds like a mother and being black is 100% a light block even in thin layers.

So, one more minor kick in the family jewels on this one. When I sealed up the secondary hull, the wiring mess obscured this:

Yes, I pinched a wire. It will need to be drilled out, as the pinching has caused it to fray off the insulation. It's the starboard side Ion pod blinky.

THIS WILL BE HAND DRILLED. Too many time a good wiring job has been done in by one slip of the Dremel...

I'm not really worried about reducing the structural integrity of the secondary hull to neck joint, as it is massively overbuilt and Scotty tells me she can handle it.

[MarkW]

Repairs completed on the trapped wire, thank God it came out OK. Hand drilling while looking at it from two different view points was key. Here's the end damage:

Overall, I feel a lot better about having done this. Look at the wire damage! This was fixed with liquid electrical tape.

The saucer is now on, which structurally seals up the gap caused by carving out the wire. The major assemblies are complete. Final decals, flat coat and stand construction are left.

[MarkW]

Spent the last couple days scrambling to finish this. Amazing how time gets sucked up doing the little things on a kit like this, where nothing is little. The base is painted as a gas giant (Planet BloodKlot) with a black post. The final wiring was soldered and run through the base tube, and attached to a simple lighted rocker switch. As seen below, you have three pins on the rocker. One for hot coming in, the middle for hot going up to the Enterprise, and a common ground. I used a 3/4 bore drill to mount this (note, a wood bore drill WILL wander in styrene), then cleaned up the hole with a hobby knife. The button is now quite secure.

One mistake I made was I didn't account for the pins sticking so far out the bottom of the rocker. Once installed, I had to bend them back a bit so there was clearance for insulation. My goal here is so my wife can unplug it if need be, but primarily the off switch when the motors get too loud. Next go round I'll mount the rocker a tad higher, and maybe shave down the excess pin length. What this all means is the model is currently permanently mounted to the stand!

Some other areas of minor frustration. I couldn't get the rearmost bubble on the top of the secondary hull to sit flat with the PE ring installed (recall I had to jury rig a new LED from burning out the Q and R harnesses). Turns out I had slightly frosted the bubble and put a thin coat of clear green on the inside to replicate the lit look of the real thing, so you couldn't see the PE ring anywho. So, I put it together without the PE part and all is swell.

And here it is--the last piece to go on the kit:

It was attached as one piece (love the 60s mechanically scanned array look), then I promptly broke the dish off the peg the second I went to move it. Damn ham hands. The dish is back on (this entire subassembly done with E6000 as it is very tough and will break off cleanly), and this kit now is officially entering the sustainment/maintenance phase!

[MarkW]

Some quick teaser shots of the final product. SWMBO was quite pleased!

Where's Commodore Decker!!??

The ISS Enterprise:

It really is hard to take a pic of this beast in a normal sized room...

[Boomstick]

I had my doubts when I saw what color she wanted this painted, but, this is brilliant. BRAVO!

[phantom]

Perfection, that Shuttle bay is astounding!!!!!

[midnightprowler]

She's beautiful! How did you do the shuttlecraft off the pad?